Geoff Hoon: The rules governing redundancies are set out by the Cabinet Office and include schemes for Compulsory Early Retirement (CER) for officers over 50 and Compulsory Early Severance (CES) for those under 50.
	The annual number of junior/middle management officers in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) who have taken redundancy through the CER or CES schemes for the years 1997 to 2006 are shown below and include efficiency restructuring in FCO Services. Costs shown for the years 1997 to 2001 are the total for all early retirements in each of those years. We could not break these figures down further without incurring disproportionate costs. The costs from 2002 to 2006 cover redundancy packages only.
	
		
			  Numbers Costs (£(1)) 
			 1997 23 2,824,767 
			 1998 1 3,314,768 
			 1999 5 3,801,817 
			 2000 7 1,871,688 
			 2001 3 2,825,390 
			 2002 2 198,498 
			 2003 1 173,353 
			 2004 2 68,739 
			 2005 10 1,270,758 
			 2006 17 2,080,925 
			 (1) Estimated Costs 
		
	
	Since 1995, we have given FCO senior management staff the opportunity to volunteer for early retirement on CER or CES terms if they complete a full posting before retirement age or had been unable to find a suitable appointment within the Department. To meet efficiency targets, in particular to reduce substantially the number of staff in the Senior Management Structure, we extended this offer to a wider range of senior officers in September 2004, using funding from the HM Treasury' Efficiency Challenge Fund. The numbers of officers who took early retirement on these terms since 1997 are shown below. As mentioned previously, the costs for 1997 to 2001 are totals covering all early retirements; to provide a further break down would incur disproportionate costs.
	
		
			  Number Costs (£(1)) 
			 1997 10 2,824,767 
			 1998 2 3,314,766 
			 1999 2 3,801,817 
			 2000 9 1,871,688 
			 2001 8 2,983,651 
			 2002 7 1,079,194 
			 2003 17 1,905,058 
			 2004 20 2,920,305 
			 2005 35 6,827,231 
			 2006 32 6,042,855 
			 (1)Estimated costs 
		
	
	The number of temporary/agency staff employed annually by the FCO is as follows:
	
		
			 2003 30 
			 2004 41 
			 2005 57 
			 2006 - January 35 
		
	
	The figures listed refer to FCO and FCO Services members of staff on temporary contract whose salary is paid from the FCO pay bill. Officers paid from project or departmental funds have been excluded. Information prior to 2003 has not been included; the research required to collect these data would incur disproportionate costs.
	The FCO does not have a central record of the numbers of staff under contract from agencies. To obtain such figures would incur disproportionate costs.
	We do not maintain central records of staff working in the FCO on inward secondment. Individual Directorates within the FCO have the authority to recruit and deploy staff on inward secondment to fill knowledge and skills gaps within the organisation.
	The FCO considers inward secondments to be loans from organisations other than Government Departments or agencies. Loans from other Government Departments or agencies are known as interchange.